LabSud 2022

We are in the Hautes-Alpes, in the middle of winter. Despite the danger, Ahmed, a young Guinean, and his fiancée, Maïmouna, decided to cross the border at night to reach France. The next morning, Laura, a peasant woman, saves Ahmed from the cold at the last minute. Impossible for Ahmed to remember the events of the night. On the advice of Manu, an activist from the Briançon Solidarity Refuge, Laura secretly keeps him at home. Then begins an impossible quest for the young man to find his fiancée, who has disappeared into the mountains without a trace. Thanks to Laura's hospitality, he happily stays to help her with the farm work. He is nevertheless haunted by the memory and the ghost of Maïmouna. Laura, for her part, must face excessive debt and increasing work. Despite a combative and independent character, she must resist the harassment and blackmail of her farmer neighbor who wants to report her to the police to get her land back. Laura and Ahmed take part in a party at the Solidarity Shelter which degenerates: a fight breaks out between exiles and Manu is taken to the police station. Laura has found an escape route: she is going to cede her land to her neighbor and move to a collective farm. The same evening, the police arrive at her house looking for Ahmed. However, he manages to escape them. Laura's feelings for Ahmed give her the courage to leave and free herself from her malicious neighborhood.

1925, in a village in Provence. The noble Madellis family leads an idle lifestyle. But Uncle Casimir bursts in and threatens to end their pension if his niece Charlotte does not find a husband in less than 24 hours. She takes the first person to come: Émile, the artisan neighbor, without knowing that he is in love with her. The marriage is pronounced with the greatest discretion, but the Madellis family, under the control of the tyrannical grandmother Mrs. Léo, decides to do everything to cancel it. She sends Emile to a college to “re-educate” him, to make him a suitable husband. Madame Léo meets Baron Médi Filet in whom she sees an excellent substitute and initiates a rapprochement. The Madellis organize a public engagement party but Émile shows up unexpectedly. Casimir learns of the attempted “remarriage” and immediately changes his will: the inheritance will go to Charlotte and Emile’s child. Casimir and Lucie reveal the Madellis’ game to Émile. He escapes, then is kidnapped by Médité. The Madellis learn of his disappearance, and Charlotte begs Casimir to help her find him. Émile escapes and suffers successive ambushes: bandits, detectives, police officers, all seek to bring him back and obtain the reward. Upon his return, the Madellis organize a reception to formalize the union. Émile arrives drunk, humiliates Madame Léo and charms the assembly. Charlotte and Emile, in love, escape through the window...

Rosso, a writer lacking inspiration, is invited to a book signing in a small village but it's a fiasco. As usual, he drinks too much and ends the night by destroying the moped of the man they call the Indian. Forced to go and apologize, he is surprised by a group of children, and together, they discover the Indian's corpse. The children know more than they let on, and manage to convince him to help them investigate the murder of their friend. He is then confronted with the world of children, a world made of stories, where reality is told and where things only exist because we believe in them. Little by little he has fun and finds his inspiration, but one detail escapes him, the children's desire for revenge. Rosso is suspected by the people of the village and the investigation turns into an expedition to prove his innocence. But the group is trapped by the real assassins, Jean and Saskia, the Indian's own sister. She wants to recover her inheritance, a treasure that the Indian secretly entrusted to the children. Rosso is sequestered and reveals the position of the fort. While he manages to escape, the children kill Jean who is chasing them. Everyone meets at the fort and war breaks out. Despite their tenacity, they cannot match Saskia's rifle, and Rosso sacrifices himself to allow them to escape. He and Saskia kill each other. Before dying, he left his book to them but it is up to them to write the ending.

Samie, 40, a committed, failed and antisocial singer, no longer knows why she lives. After yet another attempt at a "normal job", she finds herself on the street. Wandering in the streets of Paris, she gets involved in a turbulent social demonstration where she is saved from a CRS charge by Tom, 40, a radical and disillusioned activist videographer who no longer knows what he is fighting for. Both will unite during the demonstration, to raise their fists, film the abuses of the CRS and throw stones, regaining a semblance of rage and strength. But the gathering degenerates violently and to avoid being arrested, they take refuge in a squat of libertarian artists, friends of Tom: a universe which inspires Samie who starts writing political songs again in her notebook. The next day, the cops, looking for militant thugs, arrive in the squat and Samie and Tom flee in a van towards Marseille. A run where they will have no choice but to live, no choice but to resist. Like the last of the citizens of this world.

This is the story of Charlotte, winegrower, mayor of a village, and Mathieu, breeder, whose lives will be disrupted by the arrival of woofers, young people engaged in a waterless agriculture project. When Mathieu, cornered by debt, decides to buy abandoned land deemed sterile, he is unaware that it is already coveted by Charlotte, who has chosen it for her leisure area project with a swimming pool. If, for some, conflicts arise against the backdrop of economic problems or established professional habits, for their part, woofers enjoy life and display an uninhibited love of nature. How long will it take them to accept each other? The spectator sees it clearly: they all have a certain language in common, a particular attention to what surrounds them and their dependence on the living world.

Jessica Valenti dreamed of a glamorous life before marrying a French football prodigy, Marco Valenti, ten years ago, then becoming the disenchanted mistress of his agent, the borderline Smaïl Amar. Ten years have passed, ten years which have seen her husband's career become more and more anecdotal, undermined by injuries, excesses and illegal affairs in which Amar associated him. Money laundering, obscure investments, match fixing. Ten years of filling the void for this woman who for several months has been hiding a secret heavier than the others... When an investigation by Interpol and the French authorities draws dangerously close to the two men, Amar, convinced that his associate will betray him, decides to make him disappear while Jessica looks for a way to prevent the worst. In the midst of this world which is slowly falling apart, there no longer seems to be any alternative to violence and this endless headlong flight that their lives have become...